


Who the Fuck is Rachel?

by Lilzylou



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: And have two cats, And share an apartment, Angst, Brooke gets hurt, Brooke is a dancer, F/F, Hospital, I wrote this for school, Kind of cliche, Lesbian AU, They're college students, Vanessa's POV, how do i title this, minor injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 16:39:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19749631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilzylou/pseuds/Lilzylou
Summary: College keeps Brooke and Vanessa busy, that's for sure.After a week of not seeing much of each other, Brooke tells Vanessa she's going out to lunch with a friend of hers.The fight isn't pretty, but Vanessa didn't expect to have to see Brooke in the hospital because of it.





	Who the Fuck is Rachel?

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this short story for english class last year (with different names, of course) and absolutely zero fucks were given because I knew my teacher wouldn't even read it. At least, that's what I tell myself even though the assignment was supposed to be 3 pages double-spaced and I wrote 7.  
> It's cliche, sort of poor writing, and Grammarly says it has 27 mistakes, so I decided to publish it.  
> Enjoy!

Sometimes, when you spend enough time around somebody you love, you can forget how much they mean to you. You end up hurting them, a distance forms, you grow apart. Then later, when life gets a little harder or you feel a little more lonely, you find yourself regretting it.

  
We see it all the time. Children leaving unaccepting homes, long-term friends arguing over college and leaving each other, couples splitting because they can't find time in their schedules to be together.

  
I’m lucky enough that I never lost a bond so strong to something so small.

  
I almost did, though, and I’ll always never forget it.

  
My name is Vanessa, and I’m a college student at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. That’s where I met Brooke. There she was, across the room during production class, talking to a friend of hers. With each animated laugh, I became increasingly enchanted. Her smile was as radiant as the sun, blue eyes bright and full of life, sunflower yellow hair tied up on top of her head.

  
It took me two weeks to finally approach her. We went out for coffee after class. I took her to Central Park after, where we strolled hand in hand and watched the ducks swim around the pond. She asked me to be her girlfriend a week later after our second date, and I, of course, said yes.

  
We lost track of time, and before we knew it, ten months had passed. Brooke and I got an apartment not too far from school and moved in together. We adopted a cat, and then another. Every Saturday night we made sure to cook and have dinner together. Brooke would dance for me and I would sing for her. It was like something out of a cliché, sappy romance movie. We were happy.

  
In New York City, time moves differently than it does in the rest of the world. You think ten minutes have passed, but really, it’s been an hour and nobody’s stopping to tell you what you missed. It was so easy to forget about plans with friends, or the fact that you have to call your mother back, or that you had planned to go on a date to see the latest movie in theatres.

  
It was the second semester of our junior year and I was practically suffocating from the stress of one particularly large group project. Meanwhile, Brooke was spending what seemed like every waking moment at rehearsals for a dance recital that she had a lead part in. It didn’t seem like an issue until we realized a week had gone by where we didn’t see each other except for when we went to bed, which, for me, didn’t even happen some of those nights.

That Friday is when I learned firsthand how much you need to appreciate who and what you've got.

  
I had been at the computer for nearly eight hours. My eyes were sore and red, I could barely focus on what I was doing, and I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. The sound of the front door opening and closing rattled through the apartment and I could hear Brooke saying “hello!” to our cat. Soft footsteps approached the office, and then Brooke was standing behind me massaging my shoulders. I sighed and leaned into her warm hands.

  
“Hey, Mami. How’s the project going?”

  
“Slow. Jason still hasn’t emailed me back about whether or not he wants me to cut one part in scene five where the actors struggled with their lines. It’s like he’s forgotten that this is seventy-five percent of our final grade. But you know how it goes with these things. How was rehearsal?”

  
“It went well! We've been working on cleaning up our choreography a lot and it's really starting to come together. My toes hurt like hell, though. Rachel, she’s such a sweetheart, is taking me out to lunch tomorrow because we’ve been working so hard.”

  
I shifted in my seat. Brooke didn’t seem to notice my fidgeting, but if she did, she said nothing.

  
“Rachel? You haven’t said anything about her before.”

  
“Oh, yeah. She’s a friend. We’ve gotten really close these past few weeks. She’s also a lead, so she knows the struggles.” Brooke laughed a little at the end of her sentence, a small smile settling on her face.

“Okay,” I mumbled distantly, turning my head to see her. “Is Rachel in a relationship?”

Brooke shook her head. “No, why?” I gave her a look, which she caught onto pretty quickly. “Oh, now come on, Vanessa. Don’t look at me like that!”

  
“I mean, it's not like I don't have a right to get jealous. This girl, who I've never met or heard of before, is taking you out tomorrow? When were you going to tell me about this chick? _Were_ you going to tell me about her?”

  
Brooke’s attitude instantly turned sour. Her hands went to her hips, her smile vanished, and her eyes went sharp. You could practically see her walls go up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  
I turned around in my seat so that I could face her properly. “Well, we haven’t exactly had time to be with each other recently, and…”

“And what?”

  
“And you’re over here, talking about Rachel with those big googly eyes, and telling me you’re going to lunch with her tomorrow!”

  
“Vanessa, you’re being ridiculous.” Her arms went up over her chest.

  
“Am I?” I stood up, looking up into her eyes. They had subdued anger in them, almost like the calm before a storm. You could feel it, but nothing had come yet.  
“You think I’m going around and cheating on you? Do you know how ridiculous you sound?”

  
“How many times have you gone to lunch or something with her?” My voice was getting louder, and I couldn't seem to bring it down. It was zero to one hundred, and there was no backing up now.

  
“We’re just friends!”

  
“Answer my question.”

Brooke’s face went dark. “Four or five times."

  
“And you didn’t tell me? It’s like you were trying to hide it or something- oh wait, maybe you were!”

  
“I’m not! Vanessa, _you’re_ my girlfriend! I don't care about Rachel in that way!”

“Well if you actually cared about _me_ , you wouldn’t be going around with some other girl behind my back!”

  
Brooke scoffed, gave me a glare, and turned around, storming out of the room. I could see her through the doorway of the office, pushing her feet into her shoes and tugging on her jacket. “ I’m leaving until you can get your fucking head together.”

  
"Fuck you too!" I yelled after her as she slammed the door to the apartment behind her.

  
I turned around in my seat and let out a searing breath. I didn't need her telling me what I could and couldn't worry about. She's my girlfriend, for God's sake, she should tell me if she's going to go out with another girl.

  
I tried to go back to my editing but got restless. I stood up, paced the apartment, played with the cat, made myself coffee. But everything I did felt pointless and boring. Eventually, I gave up and just flopped down onto the couch and turned on Netflix. I heard some sirens amidst the honking of car horns from the street below. I didn't think twice as I settled into the couch, falling asleep.

  
No more than a half an hour later, I was woken up by my phone ringing. I picked it up expecting some robo-spam call, but what I got instead was something worse than a million spam calls.

  
Some lady introduced herself, saying she worked at the nearby hospital. She was talking all kinds of information, but all I heard was “Brooke was in an accident."

  
It took me three minutes to leave the apartment and get a cab.

  
The way to the hospital was a blur. I surely tipped the taxi driver too much, and I might have run into a couple of people, but I didn’t care. All that was going through my head was how Brooke was hurt and it was all my fault. I pushed through the hospital doors, ignoring how I could feel the eyes of others waiting in the lobby and made my way to the receptionist.

“I’m here for Brooke Lynn Hytes. Is she here? Can I see her?”

“Yes ma’am, she arrived here about an hour ago. You’re going to have to wait to see her, though, the doctors are still working with her. Could I have a name, please?”

  
“Vanessa. Vanessa Mateo.”

  
"Can you tell me how you're related to Brooke, Miss Mateo?"

  
"We're engaged. I'm her fiancee." A little fib wouldn't hurt, I decided. Especially if it got me in to see Brooke sooner.

  
The woman typed something into her computer before smiling back up at me. “Thank you. Please have a seat in the waiting area. We’ll call you when she’s ready for visitors.”  
Everything was numb. It was as if I was stuck in gelatin, I couldn’t move or breathe and everything felt slightly distorted. I turned around and slowly made my way to one of the chairs near the back of the waiting area. I didn’t fidget, I didn’t think. I just sat and waited.

  
It was almost midnight before they called for me. They said that I only had around fifteen minutes before visiting hours were over, but I was welcome to go to her room until then.

  
When I opened the door to her room, I couldn't help but cry. She was asleep under white covers, her tall, skinny frame looking frail and weak and helpless. She was attached to several machines, all beeping and whirring and buzzing. There were white bandages over her left arm and the left side of her head, and probably also covering parts of her body that were hidden by the sheets covering her. I slowly walked over to the side of her bed, sitting in the chair next to it, and took her hand without waking her up. “God,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I shouldn't have yelled at you, I'm so sorry.” I bowed my head over where I had our fingers intertwined, tears falling from my cheeks to her hand as I whispered apologies to her.

  
At midnight, they pushed me out of the room and told me that I could come back again at eight-o-clock the next morning. I nodded without thought and left the room.  
I went home, emotionless.

  
The next morning, I got up extra early and immediately left for the hospital, where I waited until eight before being allowed in to see Brooke. I knocked on the door and waited until I heard her soft “come in” before entering.

  
I didn't go to her bed, I just stood uselessly inside the doorway staring at her. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I stood there, opening and closing my mouth stupidly, before finally, “I’m sorry.”

  
Brooke smiled. She gestured (with her right arm, I noticed) to the chair next to the bed. I went to sit, taking Brooke's hand as I did. “What happened?”

  
“After I left the house, I got in a cab. I don’t remember where I was trying to go. Somebody ran the light as we were going across an intersection, and my left side…,” she paused, looking over to her left hand. “It got a little scratched up. Nothing bad, though. The doctor says the scrapes will be all healed in a week or two with proper care. I did get a bit of a concussion, though, which I’m going to need some physical therapy for. My understudy is going to be really excited.”

  
I nodded, then thought for a second. I hesitated but decided it needed to be brought up. “I’m sorry for yelling at you. I… I was stressed, and I hadn’t seen you a whole lot in the past week, and I know that’s no excuse but- “

  
Brooke cut me off. “No, it’s okay. I should’ve told you about Rachel. Yeah, I’m a little upset that you didn’t trust me, but I get it. I would have probably thought the same thing if the roles were reversed. But I promise you, there's nothing going on there. She's just another dancer.”

  
I nodded. “I believe you.” I ignored my thoughts telling me I should have believed her the first time she told me. “So, when do they think you can get out of here?”

  
“My doctor says she wants to keep me until this evening just to make sure my stats stay all good. She estimated around five o'clock." Brooke paused, then looked back at me with a smile. "The first thing I’m going to do is get some good food if you wanna join.”

  
“Yeah, I’d like that,” I said, leaning over to kiss her.

"I can't wait to get out of this bed and go home so I can show you that I like you a whole lot better than Rachel."

  
I rolled my eyes. Yeah, I'm glad I didn't lose this.


End file.
